1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital content right establishing apparatus, a digital content right establishing method, and a digital content right establishing program that establish, as copyright information, license information that defines a rights expression of an operation performed when a secondary processing of a digital content.
2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a large number of DRMs (Digital Right Management) that are techniques for protecting the copyrights of digital copyrighted works are developed. In particular, commercial digital contents such as movies or musical compositions, as is typified by a DVD, a strong protection for the copyrights is developed advantageously to a content provider.
Since the copyright protecting function in these techniques is strongly demanded to prevent digital contents from being copied, a very rigid and tough mechanism is provided to limit the degree of freedom of users in comparison with analog digital contents.
In copyright lows, regulation for so-called fair use such as copies or quotations for private use is set such that copyrighted works can be used without permission from a copyright holder. However, the degree of freedom of a user is limited to prevent such a digital copyrighted work from being copied. For this reason, the copyrighted work cannot be copied or quoted for private use, and the demand for fair use of a digital copyrighted work has increased.
On the other hand, in the present circumstances, much attention is not given to protections for noncommercial contents such as business documents, product catalogs, personal homepages, and electronic mails the contents of which are ordinarily reused or secondarily processed, and the contents are not safely circulated.
In these circumstances, international standardization operations such as ISO/IEC 21000 (MPEG21) which target circulation and management of digital contents of various forms are advanced. In MPEG21, standardization of REL (Right Expression Language), Right Data Dictionary, and the like based on XrML (extensible right Markup Language). A support method or the like to perform right expression is proposed by U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US2003/0125976.
On the other hand, the following technique is proposed. That is, when a secondary copyrighted work is created by quoting an original copyrighted work while focusing an expression of right information of the secondary copyrighted work, inheritance of the right is performed by containing copyright information related to the content of a quoted portion in the copyrighted work to protect the right of the original copyright work (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-176549).
However, permission for secondary processing of a content, depending on the substance of the secondary processing, must cope with assumptions of various secondary processings such as secondary copyrighted works, works which are no better than only a copy, or copyrighted works used as legal quotations. More specifically, when a secondarily processed content generated by processing corresponds to a secondary copyrighted work under copyright lows, the secondarily processed content has a copyright related to a created document serving as an original content and a new copyright of a creator who performs the secondary processing. However, when the secondarily processed content does not correspond to the secondary copyrighted work, as the copyright to the secondarily processed content, the copyright to the original content is inherited. In this manner, permission for the right of a digital content must assume different cases depending on the types of the secondary processings.
In permission of the right of a digital content, rights expressions, that is, “copy is prohibited” and “addition to mail is permitted” or “copy is prohibited” and “copy of secondary processed work is permitted” have dependence. For this reason, substantial mismatching must be prevented from occurring between the rights expressions serving as substances that cannot be substantially executed. For this reason, as the rights expressions of the digital contents, complex rights expressions must be consequently set.
In addition, when the right of a secondary processed work is to be set, a situation in which a right of permission set by a creator of an original content is substantially invalid must be avoided. For example, the right of permission in which, although the original content is prohibited from being delivered through the Internet, delivery of the secondarily processed content through the Internet is permitted must be avoided to set the right of permission.
In the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-176549, in a quotation or a copy in which an original content is left intact in a secondarily processed content obtained by secondarily processing the original content, protection for the right of the original content can be performed. However, for example, when a secondarily processed content that is integrated with the original form of an original content and cannot be separated from the original form is formed in the original content without keeping the original form, it must be decided whether the secondarily processed content correspond to a derivative work. For this reason, the copyright of the creator of the original content cannot be easily protected. In the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-176549, matching with the rights expressions having the dependence cannot be also secured.
In the technique of U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US2003/0125976, a right can be cyclopaedically expressed as a license obtained by packaging various rights. However, the substantial mismatching of the rights expressions cannot be prevented, and the rights expression of the original content cannot be protected.